Paint kit for the 414

[ryanbatc 12,857]

2 minutes ago, Grothauser said:

Question on the layout generator. It talks about dragging the json onto the exe file. I don't see an exe file in the package.

Make sure you get the file not the code.  Click on latest (green text) under Releases on the right side of page...

https://github.com/HughesMDflyer4/MSFSLayoutGenerator/releases/tag/v1.1.0

Grab the actual exe file

[Grothauser 4]

You are a saint, good sir. It works, and now I can get into actually working on the livery!

 

[ryanbatc 12,857]

44 minutes ago, Grothauser said:

You are a saint, good sir. It works, and now I can get into actually working on the livery!

 

Excellent!  Seriously I was digging at this all day - I had two others helping me look for stupid little errors.  One of the gentlemen finally found it lol.  So that's three people plus you trying to get it to work hehe - but we did it!

I'd love to see some paints.  I plan on eventually working on a simple one - don't have much time to even sim these days.

Will you be doing a Community style paint?

[Grothauser 4]

18 hours ago, ryanbatc said:

Excellent!  Seriously I was digging at this all day - I had two others helping me look for stupid little errors.  One of the gentlemen finally found it lol.  So that's three people plus you trying to get it to work hehe - but we did it!

I'd love to see some paints.  I plan on eventually working on a simple one - don't have much time to even sim these days.

Will you be doing a Community style paint?

Definitely on the Community Paint. I'm making a Cape Air livery - I fly with the Cape Air Virtual and I want to use this plane 😉

[Grothauser 4]

On 3/26/2022 at 4:53 PM, ryanbatc said:

Excellent!  Seriously I was digging at this all day - I had two others helping me look for stupid little errors.  One of the gentlemen finally found it lol.  So that's three people plus you trying to get it to work hehe - but we did it!

I'd love to see some paints.  I plan on eventually working on a simple one - don't have much time to even sim these days.

Will you be doing a Community style paint?

Have you figured out how to get the 750 to show up? I put in the "model." folder a model.cfg pointing to the xml files in the main mod. As a test, I made a custom panel folder as well and copied the contents of the panel.gtn750 into it and it works. However, that's obviously not gonna fly if I want to share the livery. I assume much like the model.cfg, I need my own panel.cfg that points to the XML in the panel.GTN750 in the main mod but I don't know what the syntax for that would look like. Let me know if you can help...

[ryanbatc 12,857]

3 minutes ago, Grothauser said:

Have you figured out how to get the 750 to show up? I put in the "model." folder a model.cfg pointing to the xml files in the main mod. As a test, I made a custom panel folder as well and copied the contents of the panel.gtn750 into it and it works. However, that's obviously not gonna fly if I want to share the livery. I assume much like the model.cfg, I need my own panel.cfg that points to the XML in the panel.GTN750 in the main mod but I don't know what the syntax for that would look like. Let me know if you can help...

I will look at it maybe in a few hours.  Usually it's just model=gtn750xi and same with panel in the aircraft.cfg

[Grothauser 4]

Yeah - that's what I tried first. The aircraft doesn't show up in the list when I put model="GTN750" and Panel="GTN750" in the cfg. 

I have model="cape750" in there. The model.cape750 folder contains just a model.cfg with the following contents:

[model.options]
; if true, when showing the exterior, also show the interior model (default false)
withExterior_showInterior=TRUE
; if true, when showing the interior with the exterior, exclude interior.lod.0 (default false); only has an effect when withExterior_showInterior is true
withExterior_showInterior_hideFirstLod=false
; when showing the interior, force showing lod0 (default true)
withInterior_forceFirstLod=false
; when showing the interior, also show the exterior model (default false)
withInterior_showExterior=TRUE

[models]
exterior=../../flysimware_Cessna_414A/model.GTN750/Cessna_414A.xml
interior=../../flysimware_Cessna_414A/model.GTN750/Cessna_414A_GTN750_interior.xml

I assume I need to something similar for the panel, but I don't have any other example liveries that specify a particular panel.

[Flysimware 647]

On 3/27/2022 at 8:29 AM, Grothauser said:

Definitely on the Community Paint. I'm making a Cape Air livery - I fly with the Cape Air Virtual and I want to use this plane 😉

I was hoping someone would do this as i want to add it to our paint page. I do not want to have it in our main product since it's a branding name. Nice.

 

[Grothauser 4]

1 hour ago, Flysimware said:

I was hoping someone would do this as i want to add it to our paint page. I do not want to have it in our main product since it's a branding name. Nice.

 

Any chance you can help out with the panel issue? Also - when I point a GTN750 livery to the GTN750 model, it messes with the sounds. What should my livery folder contents look like if I'm putting it in the community folder?

[Grothauser 4]

This is the exterior so far. A few minor tweaks to the paint job needed, but not much. A deal breaker though if I can't get the sounds working for either the GTN750 or GTN750NXi.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uPZtHsKrDkV2ArqzX8ktz6-2pxUZLQXW/view?usp=sharing

 

Edited March 29, 2022 by Grothauser

[Grothauser 4]

Quick Update. If I copy the "sound" folder from flysimware into the livery package, it works. I'd obviously rather not do that as I would have to update the livery everytime you updated the base sound package. I'd obviously much rather point to it. 

Also, I made a copy of it and renamed it "sound.cape" and put "Sound="cape"" into the cfg file first. That was interesting in that I got switches and some levers making the right noises, but the GPU, engine, etc. were all silent.

[Steve Dra 7,588]

@Flysimware

Moving this post here since it didn't seem to get any traction in the main 414 thread (Better to have it hear anyway). 🙂

In the interest of helping painters to create more liveries for this great plane, I respectfully request the following for future paintkit updates to help make painting this plane a pleasurable experience vs hair-pulling one. (@ryanbatc can relate) 🙂

1. UV maps aka Wireframe, UV maps, etc.  - These are a MUST for this aircraft! Especially on the 06 and 08 maps (The engine nacelles for those uninitiated in painting lingo)...this is so we can properly draw the stripes around the compound curves all over the nacelles (obviously).  Plus it's impossible to use the paint overlaid on the map to gauge the wireframe boundaries as we all know that we commonly paint just past them to cover a pixel or two that may be on the very edge of the line.
2. Plain white textures with either weathering/details on discrete layers or none at all. (I saw you're doing that soon, great!) I have already done this and uploaded my textures here: https://flightsim.to/file/30396/flysimware-414-all-white-and-polished-textures
3. The size of the paintkit...over 6GB?  In 20 years painting I have never seen a paintkit this large, even for large airliners with 4-6 main fuse maps at 4096...this kit has only 2 4096 maps for the main fuse (thank you for that BTW...less maps the better!)...but still, the organization and separate PSDs for every main map is crazy at the sizes they are...please make them smaller.  I am more than happy to offer assistance in paintkit optimization.
4. Straight lines on fuse and especially the engine nacelles are painted straight as an arrow, but undulate a lot when viewed close up.  Not sure what an be done for this.
5. Major parts labeling  - Oh my there are parts everywhere on these maps! (I understand why).  However, it would help painters tremendously if you could label major parts as they are literally scattered everywhere, and all over many maps!

Please let me know if I can help, I really enjoy flying this plane and want to give the community some nice paints to fly. 😉 

This is my latest conundrum:

I spent an hour just to get this one stripe close (which is not close at all), and I still have 3 more stripes, all needing specific adjustments on both the sides, top and bottom (a total of 32 contact points to align)...without a UV map its almost impossible without spending way more hours than I have.  Another main issue painting in MSFS is it takes forever to refresh paints in the sim....adding to the time.  If ANYONE knows a faster way than reloading multiple planes using the tools airplane selector (changing several aircraft to force MSFS to redraw...eventually), please tell me how!! 😞

 

I really am a airliner guy and have painted them for forever, rarely getting into GA planes, but this plane is a joy to fly and has pulled me into the GA arena so naturally I want to paint a few to share with the community.   Hope we can get the paintkit in better shape to make it easier for all painters to create nice liveries.

 

 

[ryanbatc 12,857]

15 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

 

I spent an hour just to get this one stripe close (which is not close at all), and I still have 3 more stripes, all needing specific adjustments on both the sides, top and bottom (a total of 32 contact points to align)...without a UV map its almost impossible without spending way more hours than I have.

 

 

This is basically why my nacelle strips look like word not allowed.  I know your painting abilities are FAR greater than mine.  I literally just trialed and errored (emphasis on errored haha) while making the top curves and attempting to align them with the side curves on the nacelles.  I basically gave up after spending 8 hours on one side.  I'm attempting a new paint now that has minimal curves that join from nacelle side to nacelle tops because I don't have that much time to spend on a paint.  (I'm also attempting a RV14 paint at work on break hehe.... it has the UV Mesh lines at least - granted the plane is much more simple than the 414).

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

It's only taken a week to get this far...

It's a case of niggling the stripes into shape. That's just ONE side of ONE engine! I'm not even going to attempt straightening the 'straight' lines.

The rest of the plane is finished kiitos jumala

[ryanbatc 12,857]

3 minutes ago, Ron Attwood said:

It's only taken a week to get this far...

It's a case of niggling the stripes into shape. That's just ONE side of ONE engine! I'm not even going to attempt straightening the 'straight' lines.

The rest of the plane is finished kiitos jumala

At least you have lovely stripes on the top of the nacelle.  Mine started nice but turned to trash once I started trying to align them with the sides....  Maybe I'll redo it someday.... doubtful though.

I have to admit, it's good to hear from pro's like you and Steve that the nacelle curves/alignment is a major PITA!

Edited April 11, 2022 by ryanbatc